Category Archives: Experiences

Morning Pages–Or Just Journaling

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

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Julia Cameron is probably most well remembered among creative people for her introduction of Morning Pages.  This is a daily exercise in journaling–or brain dumping, really.  I’ve done Morning Pages on and off for the last several years, and it’s something I highly recommend to other creative people of any sort–wordsmithing and far beyond.

So what do you write in morning pages?  Anything.  Lists, rambling, rants, whatever is going through your mind.  The goal is to get out the junk and get your creative juices going in about 3 handwritten pages (or, in the online incarnation, 750 words).  In recent months, my practice of writing morning pages got me through a lot of jumbled thoughts regarding my day job, whether or not I wanted to move, and how I wanted to prioritize my life.  I also used it to get out my story bits that were running through my head, until I ran out for a particular story (and then I knew whether or not I had full stories going around my head, or just bits).

The hardest part about morning pages for me was being candid and honest to myself and not worrying about whether or not anyone else was going to read the blandest, ugliest, or most confused of my thoughts.  This in itself is a good practice, because in writing we can’t hit our readers the hardest if we can’t be honest with ourselves about the story.  (And, of course, the importance of being honest with ourselves–many of us lie to ourselves more than anyone else.)

Most days, my morning pages took about 15 minutes.  Sometimes more, rarely less.   I believe all of us have time for this, or should make time for it.  That said, (speaking of honesty) I fall off of doing mine for large chunks of time.  It’s not about the 15 minutes… well, really, I don’t know why I’m not doing it.  I think because of the concept of them being morning pages, I get busy in the morning and then forget until the evening.  And they are morning pages, right?

Still, if it’s a little thing that’s getting me hung up, then maybe I should just call it journaling, and say that I try to journal regularly.  Whatever it is you do, I recommend spending some time with your daily thoughts and recording them–brilliant or bland–in a private forum for which you are the only audience.  Many people blog publicly to do this, but I don’t feel it’s the same–blogging is a public forum with an audience that is not you.  Try going back to private diaries for a while–online or offline; morning or night–and see what happens.

Do you journal?  Do you feel it’s critical to your creativity?

Oversharing

14 Thursday Jun 2012

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I really enjoy worldbuilding. Or rather, in the case of my favorite setting (Earth), world-modifying. I tend to put a fair amount of effort into it (sometimes more than my storytelling!) and want to show off what I’ve created.

This is a problem, though, and one I struggle with whenever I tell a story (in any medium, including games).

How is it a problem? According to all the advice I’ve ever seen, we should as storytellers prepare a lot more of our world than we share. I’ve seen various percentages and fractions and ratios thrown around, but the basic point is we should know a lot more than we show. It helps us add verisimilitude and consistency to our stories, and helps us reduce the chances of contradiction and logical fallacies.

But if you’re at all like me, you want to show off everything you’ve made, often at the expense of your story or the interest of your audience.

I think this is a natural inclination, but maybe not. It might come, especially among fantasy writers, by our introduction at impressionable ages to the works of Professor Tolkien. He is the master of oversharing, and indeed that seems to be the point of his works: to reveal a vibrant and living fantasy world. Character and plot take back seats to setting. Note that there is nothing at all wrong with this (see my article on The Three Foci for why I believe that), but even then, you can and should hold back something.

On the other hand, an author I believe who not only does incredible worldbuilding but also knows exactly how much to share and how much to hold back is the author of another popular fantasy series: JK Rowling. Ann and I have been re-”reading” the books (in audiobook format) and I’ve been struck by her excellent use of foreshadowing and subtle worldbuilding. It is clear, knowing what I know about the overall storyline, that she knew a lot about her universe and her storyline as early as… well… the first chapter of the first book! Yes, Rowling has revealed a lot more about her universe since she completed the books, but it is all superfluous. It might explain a few things, but none of it was needed for her story so, although she knew it, she left it out.

That takes discipline as a storyteller (I think… although maybe for some people it just comes naturally?), and it’s something I want to begin to emulate (say, for my recently mentioned NaNoWriMo story…).

How about you? Do you find it easy or difficult to hold back from sharing everything you’ve created? And if you do hold back, how easy is it for you to decide what to share and what not to?

On Daily Word Counts

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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When I wrote my first completed novel, I had a goal of 10 long-hand pages a day. When I wrote my second novel (my first NaNoWriMo), I had a goal of 1667 words a day. Continuing on through several other novels, I had daily word count goals, and most days I met or exceeded them. I participated in word-count challenges with fellow writers and I had fun.

But then I stopped making my word count goals. I tried again, on and off, but it didn’t stick.

What happened? I’ve been thinking about this for years, trying to find the answer, and I think that I’ve finally found it–the fuel ran out.

Daily word counts are a tool–and whether a good or bad one depends on the writer. They are a measuring stick designed to get us to make progress. We like quantifying and numbers and charts. We see them all the time, and in something like writing a story, it’s nice to be able to quantify it, isn’t it?

It is, but at the same time, I think setting word count goals need to be combined with other motivations. In my past prolific novelist life, when I could write nearly as long as you’d let me, it gave me a stopping mark. A place to say, “Okay, I’ve done it. Time to fold the laundry.” However, without the fuel of passion, word counts became a grind. During past NaNoWriMos, I’d heard people telling others that if they got stuck on their words to (literally) throw non-sequitor ninjas into the story or an explosion. And if that works, that’s fabulous. But it also impressed on me that when you’re doing that, you might just be writing for the numbers, not the story. In that case, I think it’s more valuable to not worry about your word count and spend some time figuring out what happens next, or why you’ve hit the stumbling block you have.

Storytelling is an art, and art can be difficult to formulate into numbers because numbers are far easier to grasp and understand than your imagination. Word counts are made with good intentions–a goal post to make deadlines–a sign of progress–but they aren’t the end all of storytelling.

So if you aren’t writing to word count, what is the alternatives?
1) Writing until you feel done (or you run out of time).
2) Writing to the end of the scene.
3) Writing until the end of the chapter.
4) Writing until you reach the end of the event in the story (which may or may not fall under 2 or 3).
5) Timed writing.

Options 2-5 still have a feeling of “word count” goal writing, and while Option 1 is my preference, I recognize that it’s vague. Yet I still think of the days when I set 1,000-word goals, and regularly got 2,000-3,000 words in a sitting–on those days, I simply wrote until I was done, and I was satisfied–and satisfied with what I got. Nothing felt forced or invented just to keep the words coming.

Not all parts of storytelling are activities we look forward to–revising seems to cause a common procrastination malady and needing to set goals to gain progress (which I also found hard–if I do 10 pages a day and those 10 pages are clean, does that mean I get the day off?). At the same time, many of us are telling stories simply because we want to tell stories. I want to believe that if we are truly excited enough about this story that’s in our minds, we won’t need number goals to get us through the story. Idealistic? Yes. I’m not saying that word count goals are, in themselves, terrible, but they can be a crutch to be aware of. In recent years, a hard goal of X words a day hasn’t worked, and neither has something vague like “write when I want to.”

Yet, I remember those days–those days when I had word counts, but they weren’t the point. Telling the story was. I haven’t found the path back there yet, but maybe when the right idea steals me away again….

Is It Too Soon to Think About NaNoWriMo?

29 Tuesday May 2012

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Last week, Mike talked about NaNoWriMo and getting started now in your planning. Since every writer has a different process, I thought I’d throw in my thoughts, too.

I started doing NaNoWriMo in 2002, and continued on steadily until about 2007, “winning” each year and setting new challenges. Over the next couple of years following, I tried it and stalled out, and then eventually decided that NaNoWriMo wasn’t a good practice for me anymore and I haven’t even attempted for the last three years.

Being a chronic overachiever, I wanted to do more than just 50,000 words; I wanted to write a whole novel–usually in the 80-100k range for me. In my second winning year I achieved 50,000 words in about 10 days, and finished the novel at 100k words in 22 days. It was a rush, and a lot of fun and I’m glad I did it, because it taught me what I could do when I put my mind to it. (Even if I never touched it again.)

During Novembers, I always went in with a plan–some kind of outline. Unlike Mike, I didn’t start thinking too hard about it several months ahead (I was working on other novels the rest of the year). I like to write while the fire is hot–if I’m feeling passionate enough about a story that I can write 50k in a month, then if I start planning it in May, it’s going to be written long before November rolls around. I’m fickle and when I’m invested in a story, I turn out the first draft quickly. Any story I started planning now, well, honestly, I would probably be bored of by the time November rolled around, and I’d start on a new idea instead.

That said, the years I faltered, I didn’t have much of a plan, and I’m certain that’s one of the reasons I didn’t complete. (Another reason was burn-out, and that’s what fed into lack of planning.)

So, I agree with Mike in that a plan is going to make your trip through November easier. I usually started digging into my planning and research in September or October, and inevitably during November, I would make changes to my outline as I ran into issues or had new ideas. But I had something going in, and that’s important. My outlines ran anywhere from 2 pages to 20 pages, and some stories worked well that way and others didn’t.

As we get nearer, I’ll talk about varying story-survival techniques that have (and haven’t) worked for me, and maybe you’ll find something that sparks an idea for you.

***

So the question, of course, is do I plan on doing NaNoWrimo this year? Truthfully, I haven’t decided. I don’t have any burning stories that scream “write me in November” at the moment. If I do between now and then, I may dive in. If I don’t then I’ll cheer on Mike and the rest of you from the sidelines.

Never Too Soon For NaNo!

25 Friday May 2012

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National Novel Writing Month hits this November (just as it does every year). Are you going to write a novel for it?

“But Mike, that’s still five months away. It’s way too early to think about it for now.”

If you’re really considering writing a novel (and more power to you if you pull it off), you probably know by now that it’s not something most can just sit down and do on a whim. Think about the novels you read and the time investment you must put into them (even if you’re a fast reader). Now think about how much harder it is to compose than to consume.

Short stories are relatively easy to read and significantly easier to write. Yes, you probably need to do a bit of research and planning for a short story, but when you consider that most are a sixth to a tenth as long as the average novel you can get an appreciation for the added complexity of novel writing.

So why am I suddenly talking about NaNo here at the end of May?

Well, as you might have guessed, I’m considering throwing my hat into the novel-writing challenge again this year. Unlike my first foray into NaNoWriMo in 2009, where I went into the challenge with minimal preparation–I wasn’t even exactly sure of where I wanted to set the story until I was already writing it!–if I’m going to do a massive writing project this November I want to be really ready for it.

Yes, I completed the challenge in 2009 and wrote my 50,000 words, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a success. I’ve not looked at those words since. They weren’t a complete waste, though, as I generated some ideas for other stories out of them. For this year, I’d like to get a stronger result.

If you feel the same way and you’re considering doing NaNoWriMo this or any year, it behooves you to put in the work before you put in November’s work, whether it a be a month or five months. Writing a novel isn’t something most people can just up and do in a month on a lark.

I’m sure Ann and I will talk more about NaNoWriMo before, during, and after November, but let this column be a reminder that it’s going to be here sooner than you anticipate. Start preparing for it now and you’ll undoubtedly find it easier to succeed in November. That’s my plan, anyway!

All that said, I need to practice what I preach and get myself ready for November, and I’ll be sharing my experiences in the process with you as I go.

Right now, this is what I think I need to have ready before November 1st. This list is subject to grow over time:

  • Research (mostly 17th-19th century France)
  • Outline (I’ve never been any good at this, but it will help)

That’s not a very helpful list, is it? Well, I’ll keep revising it and, as I said, expanding it.

Are you anticipating NaNoWrimo?  How far in advance do you want to start your planning?

Expose Yourself

04 Friday May 2012

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I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the old “Write what you know” advice and instead advocate “Write what you want to read.”

Expanded out a little, that becomes, “Tell the stories you want to experience.”

But to know what kinds of stories those are, you need to do some homework. What, homework? Yes. I know it will be terribly rough for you, but you need to expose yourself to stories.

Note that I very specifically avoided saying “…but you need to read a lot of novels.” If you want to be a novelist, you obviously should be reading a lot of novels, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to just them. Watch movies. Read webcomics. Try graphic novels. A story is a story, and although the way they are told varies by medium, the basics of good storytelling transcend those limitations.

When I wanted to be a fantasy novelist, oh so many years ago, I heard the further piece of advice, “Read a lot of novels, including those outside your genre.” To this day, I believe this is excellent advice for all storytellers, from novelists to webcomic artists to screenplay writers to graphic novelists.

Why?

Well, a good story is a good story, regardless of its medium or genre. Regardless of the often arbitrary category in which it is filed. Don’t be embarrassed by these labels assigned to stories by publishers, bookstore owners, or movie theaters. There are amazing stories told in every kind of genre, in every kind of medium.

Want examples?

When I was an aspiring fantasy novelist and heard that advice I went to my mom and asked her to recommend a good romance novel. She went through her collection and found me a historical romance. I read it. I enjoyed it. I remember little about it except the lead character’s surname, which I later co-opted into my own stories because I thought she was cool. The story was inspiring in at least some way, even though I was so far outside the target audience.

Except I am, because I’m someone who enjoys a good story. And that’s another related point: as a storyteller, you are the target audience of everything.

Let’s go with another example. I have a friend who recommended The Hunger Games trilogy to me, although he was a little embarrassed, because they are YA. I told him it didn’t matter, because of my mantra, “A good story is a good story.”

So go forth, friends, and expose yourself to stories. Not just those in the genre you want to write. Not just those in the medium you want to create in. Experience stories all across the spectrum, from dystopian YA to historical romance to mainstream tales, as novels or movies or sequential art.

Does It Count?

01 Tuesday May 2012

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Several years ago, a friend asked me what I’d been reading lately. What I had been reading at that time was another friend’s novel manuscript for critique. When I explained this, he said, “That’s not a real book.” I said, “I think reading 200k words of story constitutes as a ‘real book,’ whether or not it’s published.”

“Oh,” he said, and dropped the subject.

With the growth of the Internet, we see serials and other web-stories on the rise, and we read them and enjoy them. With social sites like Goodreads, blog networks, and Twitter, we now have public challenges, like “read 52 books in a year.” These are well-intended challenges, trying to get us reading more and widely.

I’ve tried these challenges, had the little counter images, but then found myself trying to figure out what “counted” What is a “real book?”

  • Does it count if I’ve read it already?
  • Does it count if it’s a manga or graphic novel?
  • Does it count if I listened as an audiobook instead of print?
  • Does it count if it’s not yet a collection, or I read it while it was being serialized?
  • Does it count if my friend’s unpublished novel or fanfic?

I’m not sure why these things plagued me, but I wasn’t the only one asking themselves, or others, “does it count?”

Depending on the challenge, maybe it doesn’t count. And it shouldn’t matter, but we like these widgets and memes, and being part of a community doing something together.

Since I took up knitting and spinning, my reading time plummeted as I found myself having to choose to do one or the other. Sometimes I watched television shows and movies instead because I missed stories, and eventually I rediscovered audiobooks, which I’d always been uncertain of before.

I started listening to them while I worked, while I knitted, while I did chores, and I grew to love them. But then I got worried–was I less of a reader because I listened to books instead of reading them in print?

Truth is, I don’t think so. Print versus electronic versus audio–they’re all the same story, all the same words. Whether I’m reading them in print or on a screen, I still hear the story in my head. When I’m listening to an audiobook, it’s still the same words coming into my head–it’s just through my ears instead of my eyes.

Stories are stories. Enjoy stories, and when you worry about whether or not they “count,” ask yourself whether your goal is to enjoy more stories or “read” 52 books this year of a particular kind.” There’s no right or wrong answer here, it’s just a matter of your anxiety about it. If you’re like me and worry about whether or not things “count,” maybe you, too, need a new “counting” system.

Did I enjoy that story? Did I learn something from it? Then it counts.

Watch Your Television

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

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I have a love/hate relationship with the television. I don’t tend to watch broadcast television (I haven’t had cable in about a decade), but I do turn my Netflix subscription on and off, and when it’s on, I spend a lot of time with it. I also have a tendency to re-watch the many DVDs we own. This last weekend, I binged on a marathon to catch up with all the shows my friends have been gleeing about for the last few months.

But why do I dislike the television? (1) I feel like it spends time dragging me passively into their stories instead of considering my own. (2) It’s an easy way for me to waste several hours buried in another reality.

Isn’t that the same as reading? I’d never tell someone not to read a book.

When reading, we are engaged, but it’s not entirely passive as we have to make an effort (however small) to consume it. On the other hand, with the television, it’s easy to just shut your brain off and zone into the glowing screen. Engagement is a matter of choice.

I have many highly creative friends who watch television. It’s clearly not sucking out their creative potential. Why should it sap mine? As I watched television this weekend, I got an idea for a story that I’ve been stuck on for a while. I spent more time thinking about that story this weekend than I have in weeks. This isn’t the first time that’s happened, either. During some of my most prolific parts of my life, I avidly watched DVDs every day. It certainly didn’t slow me down. Most of the time when I’m watching television now, I’m knitting or spinning and I’m looking for something to engage in with the rest of my active mind.

So I’m going to revise my thoughts. The television isn’t the killer of all things creative. The television is just a place where I’ve been known to go when I’m avoiding thinking. But carefully picking shows, and watching with interest, makes watching a television show or a movie as inspiring a story as reading–it’s a form of taking in stories. The trick for me is not to let it become a slack-jawed passive activity and just to watch it for the sake of it being on or something to stare blankly at while avoiding doing something else.

As it seems with most things, if approached mindfully, I don’t think the television is quite the evil time-sucker as I believed it was for many years.

So, go forth and watch television. But be attentive, and turn it off when it’s no longer entertainment, but a passive activity.

Okay, What’s Next?

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

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Do you have a scene in your head that you replay over and over? Most people have stories on the brain. Some of those stories are witty things we wish we’d told the rude person on the bus, and sometimes they are fantastical stories about dragons and knights. Whatever the story in your head is, write it down.

Mike and I talked about this last week when we were reviewing his post on “Little Stories.” Originally, he just said to encourage the little stories and let them go. I told him that it would be better to suggest they write them down, even if they’re never going to “go anywhere.”

Why do that? Why not save the writing for the big “important” stories? Sometimes, your brain gets stuck on something. A scene, a chapter, a moment, a piece of dialogue, and it recycles it over and over.

Often, once you’ve written it down, your brain frees up to say “Okay, what’s next?”

This is where keeping a journal can come in handy. I have a 750words account that I’ve been writing in daily for some months now, and it’s full of little stories. Things I wish I could say to rude people, better ways to have explained a complicated situation, fictional moments with fictional characters that aren’t stories so much as a slice of life only interesting to me, and a lot more. Once I’ve written these things down, they are free. They exist outside of my brain, even if no one ever sees them. My brain says, “Okay, what’s next?”

How many people say, “Oh, I’ve got this story that’s been in my head for years. Maybe someday I’ll write it down.” Oftentimes, those stories are a small collection of scenes, but they keep replaying over and over, and feel like a huge, completed opus.

Start writing them down. Write down all of the complete and incomplete moments. Figure out what happens before and after that moment. Let your brain refill with another story. Don’t be afraid of “wasting time” or that you can only write the words that you someday are going to show to others. Don’t be afraid that if you write it down, nothing else will come—something will, even if not right away. Every word you write is practice, and every amount of practice moves you forward–maybe as you get better in prose, or you simply move out some stale thoughts from your brain so fresh new ones get in.

So try it out for a while–in a paper journal or an online journal or wherever you prefer. Write down those little stories in your head–those little snippets and moments and slices of life, and see what comes next.

How Emotions and Backstory Affect a Setting

28 Tuesday Feb 2012

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Many of my early stories could have been told in an empty white room. Describing settings was always so tedious to me–getting away from the action of the scene to stop and explain to the reader about the lampshade and the carpets in a soulless laundry list or overwrought, long-winded paragraphs.

But it doesn’t have to be that way–it just took me a long time to understand how to give soul to my descriptions, so I thought I’d share my discovery.

How we view things–everything–is weighed down by our emotions, moods, and history. How I see my mother’s house is going to be entirely different than my husband or my best friend, because we have different emotional and historical attachments (or values) to the setting.

This has become most evident lately, as I’m preparing for some changes in my life. I’m moving back to my semi-rural hometown from the city. For many years, going back to visit my hometown always brought negative feelings in me–it felt small and worn down and I could only remember too many events that happened there that made me want to leave and never return.

On the other hand, my friends who had visited that town thought it was “cute and quaint” and harbored no negative feelings for it. My husband, who didn’t grow up there, had entirely different feelings about it, and those were based on his own life growing up in a city suburb.

It’s the same when someone enters your house. You think it’s a mess and cluttered, or even spotless and clean. Another person might come in and think it’s cozy, tidy, and lived in, or they might feel it’s too pristine or too sterile. Each person perceives the same place differently, based on their own experiences, preferences, and their emotional state.

Use this for your characters.

Does your character prefer small and lived-in? Does she prefer large, spotless, and empty? What does her background suggest?

Is she in a hurry? She might not be paying attention to the details and everything is an obstacle. Is she trapped? She might be eying the details and the walls feel imprisoning.

Is it her mother’s house? What if her mother has moved since the last time she visited, and so the house is even alien to the protagonist? What mixed emotions would that cause? Would she see items once from her previous home now displaced?

How does our cackling villain see his dark lair? How does the hero? Knowing this can help you, even if you don’t decide to share it.

There are many directions to take–and many dimensions you can unlock about your characters’ personality, emotions, and background–by how they respond to their immediate setting. Give it a try, and see if it helps bring new insights in both how you integrate your description into your narrative, and what it reveals about your character.